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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Thomas’ Compendium was composed in imitation of Augustine's Enchiridion, and with the intention of correcting features which struck Thomas, as they have struck other readers, as strange. The treatment of faith was the principal focus of Thomas’ discontent. In place of Augustine's wandering history of the engagement of divine goodness with the world, Thomas emphasised the cognitive aspect of faith and its concern with being. The two approaches differ in the extent to which they can allow a distinction of the cognitive from the voluntative in virtue. Augustine's insistence on keeping them together has definite strengths in resisting voluntarism, but Thomas’ emphasis imposes constraints on the moralising reduction of faith to action.
1 Enchiridion 3. Comp. Theol. 1.1. Quotations from Augustine are based on the Maurist text, those from Thomas use Opuscula Theologica I, ed Verardo, R. A. (Rome: Marietti, 1953)Google Scholar.
2 Jannasch, W., “Enchiridion”. Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart 3te Aufl., hrsg. Campenhausen, H. von et al., II (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1958) p. 463Google Scholar. (The subtitle of that mighty six-volume reference work describes it, implausibly, as a Handwörterbuch…)
3 Cavadini, John, “Enchiridion”, in Augustine through the Ages: an encyclopedia, ed. Fitzgerald, Allan D. et al. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), p. 296Google Scholar.
4 Exposés Généraux de la Foi, Oeuvres de Saint Augustin 9, texte, traduction, notes par J. Rivière. (Paris: Desclée, de Brouwer, 1947). The footnotes to Rivière's “Introduction” (pp. 79–100) point us to a previous article of his own and to a solitary article of 1903 spun off a critical reedition of the text.
5 Ayres, L., Augustine and the Trinity (Cambridge University Press, 2010) pp. 72–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 Enchiridion 3.9: Satis est christiano rerum creatarum causam siue coelestium siue terrestrium siue uisibilium siue inuisibilium non nisi bonitatem credere Creatoris.
7 Athanasius, Contra Gentes 1.
8 Griffiths, P. J., Lying: an Augustinian theology of duplicity (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2004)Google Scholar.
9 Enchiridion 19.72: Ac per hoc ad omnia quae utili misericordia fiunt, valet quod Dominus ait, ‘Date eleemosynam, et ecce omnia munda sunt vobis’.
10 Enchiridion 31.117: Ipsa est autem fides Christi, quam commendat Apostolus, quae per dilectionem operatur, et quod in dilectione nondum habet, petit ut accipiat, quaerit ut inveniat, pulsat ut aperiatur ei.
11 Comp. Theol. 1.1.1: Consistit enim humana salus in veritatis cognitione,…in debiti finis intentione,…in iustitiae observatione… Cognitionem autem veritatis humanae saluti necessariam brevibus et paucis fidei articulis comprehendit… Intentionem humanam brevi oratione rectificavit: in qua dum nos orare docuit, quomodo nostra intentio et spes tendere debet, ostendit. Humanam iustitiam quae in legis observatione consistit, uno praecepto caritatis consummavit.
12 It appears once in the discussion of lying, which is the sin par excellence against faith, where he says that real lying depends on the intentio, which is to communicate something other than what one believes. It appears a second time in the section on love, where he distinguishes loving action from what we may do prompted by a carnalis intentio.
13 Comp. Theol. 2.1.545: Sed quia inter cetera fidei documenta unum esse diximus ut credatur Deus per providentiam de rebus humanis habere, insurgit ex hoc in animo credentis motus spei, ut sciliicet bona quae naturaliter desiderat, ut edoctus ex fide, per eius auxilium consequatur.
14 ST 1–2.58.ad 3 To the objection that faith is not listed among the five intellectual virtues he replies simply, “Faith, hope and charity surpass human virtue, for they are virtues of men as made partakers in divine grace.”
15 Note especially ST 2–2.4.1.
16 Comp. Theol. 1.149.298.
17 De civitate Dei 12. 6–8.
